Lucid Dreaming Research Paper

Dreaming, although a substantial component of our nighttime lives, remains somewhat of an enigma due to the fact that it occurs while we are unconscious. The inaccessibility of the unconscious mind weakens full analysis and comprehension of dreaming which researchers have been attempting to accomplish. However, over the years many researchers have elucidated many mysteries about dreams, such as when we dream, why we dream, and what we dream about, in order to bring forth an understanding of dreams as well as identify

lives is that dreams are just optical illusions that you create within yourself. In certain

To many people, dreams are the thoughts that occur while sleeping, having almost mystic qualities. For millennia the significance of dreams has escaped even the brightest of philosophers and intellectuals. Many people have speculated about why people dream and what meanings the dreams have but in recent times two theories have gained credibility in answering those questions. The first theory is Sigmund Freuds and the other is known as the cognitive theory of dreams also known as biological determinism.

As we lay ourselves down every night to put our bodies to rest, our brains begin doing something extraordinary. It begins piecing together images, creating scenarios, simulating sensory perception, and adding in emotions and fears. They can make us wake up with a smile on our face or in a cold sweat. Dreaming is such a strange and often inexplicable phenomenon, but something we all do just about every night. People have theorized the process and the utility of dreams for centuries. However, much of the accepted knowledge we have a bout dreams today is still only theory. In fact, hardly anything about the dreaming experience is concrete because it is an experience

Close your eyes and think of the last dream you had, do you remember it? Maybe you had the ability to fly or you were falling down. For some, you may have woken up gasping for air due to a scary dream. If any of you are like me you experience seemingly realistic dreams.

     An individual’s unconscious mind combines bits and pieces of information and places them together. Dreams are almost always visual. “Forty to fifty percent of dreams have some form of communication present in them and a very small percentage of dreams give the dreamer the ability to use his or her five senses”(Encarta). Dreams allow one to take a closer look into their mind in a quest for self-discovery. In ancient Greece dreams were believed to be messages from the gods. Hippocrates and Aristotle believed that dreams contained physiological information that may be cause of future illnesses. Dreams can be used to solve a number of different types of problems. In The Interpretation of Dreams, by Sigmund Freud he states “As regards the dream, all the troubles of waking life are transferred by it to the sleeping

reality” is very complicated. How do people know that they have accomplished their “dream,” let alone knowing what it is? For all anybody knows they could be living a dream. One example of life being a dream is the poem “A Dream Within a Dream” by Edgar Allen Poe (A Dream Within A Dream). Poe talks about how he feels that his life is not real and that he is living a dream. He contradicts reality with the reference to dreams within dreams. With a deeper meaning, readers can see that Poe is indicating how life and reality are different from dreams, and it also goes on to refer that dreams that people have are never met and are not part of the reality of life (A Dream Within A Dream).

Are we actually living in reality? Or is this all just a dream? The father of modern philosophy, René Descartes, had a view of his own on whether we are dreaming or living reality as he introduced this philosophy with more importance than it had had before. The dream argument is what this essay will be covering as it was originally said by Plato and Socrates, expanded on by Descartes, and how it’s interpreted by philosophers today. René Descartes was a French mathematician-philosopher.

I hesitated my writing and allowed my mind to wander. Dreams. The realm of unreal turned reality. A place where the same intellect of a person lies but is used in divergent ways.

When we dream, we are metaphorically free. While in our deep sleep, we get to venture to other worlds,back in time, or to the future even. We get to become whoever we have

2. The movie “Inception” explains how our mind constructs dreams from subconscious thought processes that are fueled with hopes and ideas for what we our life to be (what Disney defines as “dreams”). An example the construction of a reality within a dream would be The city “Limbo” that Cobb and Mal both created together while undergoing inception. “Limbo” was Cobb and Mal’s “ideal” world in which they would use figments of their past experiences from reality (Mal’s childhood home) to construct a subconscious

Distinguishing what is a dream and what is reality can be difficult. Most times it is obvious that a dream is only a dream.

that one is dreaming and that the dream is coming from the self. The notion that

human mind can think and there are no unattainable dreams that one’s mind cannot conceive. Therefore stating that

What happens at night when we enter what is called rapid eye movement or rem is called dreaming. What happens when we dream our brain tries to deal with what we’ve done throughout the day. It does this in the form of a dream. What happens when we wake up out of the dream? Does it affect us during the day? Dreams have been found to shape us in ways that is almost unnoticeable to us.